Canon Peter Groves writes:
JOHN MUDDIMAN, who died on 5 December, aged 73, was a brilliant New Testament scholar, an extraordinary teacher and preacher, and a faithful priest and pastor, who loved and served the Church of God in many and various ways. He belonged to what was perhaps a golden generation in Anglican biblical scholarship, and, as writer, editor, tutor, supervisor, mentor, and confessor, he helped shape both Church and academia.
John went up to Keble College, Oxford, from Southampton in 1965, reading for Classical Mods before taking Schools (finals) in theology. His effortless command of Latin and Greek gave an ideal grounding for biblical studies in particular, and he thrived under the tutelage of luminaries such as Austin Farrer, and with his lifelong friend John Barton as his tutorial partner.
A move to Westcott House and Selwyn College, Cambridge, was followed by a year in Leuven, before John returned to Oxford to undertake a D.Phil. on the fasting controversy in Mark, under the supervision of George Caird.
Having been ordained, he combined his research with an affectionately remembered chaplaincy at New College, and then became Vice-Principal of St Stephen’s House, where he worked successfully with the Revd Dr David (now Lord) Hope in bringing the college forward after difficult times.
John moved on to a lectureship at the University of Nottingham, and later took up the post of Fellow and Tutor in Theology at Mansfield College, Oxford. He was well known for teaching more and longer hours than any of his colleagues in college and faculty, and threw himself with gusto into the pastoral and administrative duties which many academics bewail.
At the same time, he offered himself to the diocese as an NSM, and, for many years, was a beloved assistant priest in Littlemore, and then at St Mary Magdalen’s, Oxford, where a former pupil was Vicar. He served the wider Church generously and patiently, chairing a Church of England committee on theological education, and working as a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) for many years.
As a colleague wisely put it, John “eschewed the principle to which some scholars adhere, to leave no thought unpublished”, and critical opinions that would now be the subject of an entire monograph — such as that tous ek peritomes in Galatians 2.12 should be translated “the Jews”, not “the circumcision party” — were passed on by word of mouth in teaching encounters rather than journals.
He did publish many judicious essays and reviews, as well as a beautiful little introduction, The Bible: Fountain and well of truth (Blackwell, 1983), and a volume on Ephesians in the Black’s Commentary series (Continuum, 2001) which remains standard. The Oxford Bible Commentary (co-edited with John Barton), a gift to clergy and students alike, is John’s best-known academic legacy, a legacy that brings academy and Church together with the finest critical scholarship: it is fitting that his Festschrift, presented in 2016, was called The New Testament and the Church. He seemed to know the text of the New Testament in Greek by heart (as well as most of its textual variants), and he was the sharpest of interlocutors at a seminar or in a conference. He shared Farrer’s scepticism about the Q hypothesis, and his pupil Mark Goodacre now carries the flag for them both.
John’s infectious joy in the study of the New Testament was evident to all who encountered him. As a tutor, he almost laughed rather than spoke his piercing critical insights, as he leant forward in his chair and urged his views upon the tutee with the insistent “Hmm, hmm?” which followed every suggestion.
As a lecturer, his beanpole figure would dance at the front of the room while he held forth on the (fictional, he thought) Council of Jerusalem in Acts, or Luke’s knowledge of Josephus, or the significance of the cushion in Mark 4.38 and the importance of the article that preceded it. A more gifted, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic teacher of the Bible would be very hard to find, and the ease with which John translated his tremendous learning into the context of the parishes in which he served enabled him to personify his contention that critical scholarship belongs at the heart of the Church’s life, and that Catholic Christian orthodoxy has nothing whatever to fear from academic study of the New Testament.
John had two children, Tom and Joe, with his first wife, Gillian, and later married another Gillian, the widow of his old friend David Nicholls. Tragically, she died of aggressive cancer not long after their honeymoon. In retirement, he moved to be close to his family, and took enormous joy in caring for his grandchildren and indulging his passion for all things culinary (he iced and decorated cakes to professional standard). He continued to write, and leaves a largely completed book on Mark and a substantial study of pseudepigraphy, which it is hoped will see the light of day in the future.
John used to joke that he was apprehensive about heaven, fearing that it would involve being told by one apostle after another that he was wrong about the New Testament. If so, he is in good company.
